Photographing Athletes vs. Everyday Adventurers
Photographing a professional athlete and photographing an everyday adventurer are, in a lot of practical ways, entirely different assignments, even when the activity being documented looks superficially similar. Recognizing and adapting to that difference has become one of the more important judgment calls in how I approach each specific project.
The gap isn't about who's more interesting to photograph, both categories produce genuinely compelling work. It's about what each subject brings to the shoot, and how that changes nearly everything about how I plan and execute the coverage. If you want the fuller framework I use for adapting my approach to different kinds of subjects, it's part of a bigger system in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.
What Professional Athletes Bring to a Shoot
Professional athletes typically bring a level of physical mastery and camera awareness that fundamentally changes what's achievable within a given shoot window. They can execute a specific technical movement repeatedly and consistently, which opens up compositional and technical possibilities that would be genuinely unsafe or unrealistic to ask of someone without that same level of skill.
Many professional athletes also have real experience being photographed and filmed, which shows up in how naturally they move through a shoot, understanding intuitively how to hit a mark, repeat an action for multiple takes, or adjust their positioning slightly based on brief creative direction without extensive explanation needed.
This combination, physical mastery and camera experience, means I can often plan more technically ambitious shots with a professional athlete, since the actual execution risk of asking for a specific difficult movement or repeated take is considerably lower than it would be with someone less experienced and skilled in that specific activity.
That said, working with professional athletes also comes with its own specific challenges, tighter schedules given their broader professional commitments, sometimes a more guarded, camera-aware demeanor that can occasionally read as less spontaneous or authentic than the more unguarded presence an everyday adventurer often brings to a shoot.
What Everyday Adventurers Bring to a Shoot
Everyday adventurers, people passionate about a given activity without professional-level mastery or extensive camera experience, bring a different but equally valuable set of qualities, often a more genuine, unguarded authenticity that can be harder to capture with a subject more accustomed to being photographed and performing for a camera.
This authenticity comes with real tradeoffs, though. An everyday adventurer typically can't safely or reliably execute the same technically demanding movements a professional athlete could, which changes what's actually achievable within a shoot and requires more careful, conservative planning around what I'm actually asking a subject to do physically.
Camera awareness also tends to be lower, which can be a genuine asset for capturing authentic, unselfconscious moments, but requires more patience and a different directing approach, since an everyday adventurer often needs more guidance and reassurance to feel comfortable and natural in front of the camera than a more camera-experienced professional athlete would.
I've found that some of my most emotionally resonant work has come specifically from photographing everyday adventurers, since their genuine, unpolished relationship with the activity being documented often reads as more relatable and authentic to a broader audience than a professional athlete's more polished, practiced performance.
How I Adjust My Shot List for Each Category
For professional athletes, I build shot lists that take advantage of their technical capability, more demanding action sequences, precise timing shots that depend on a subject's ability to execute a specific movement repeatedly and consistently across multiple takes if needed to nail the exact composition and moment.
For everyday adventurers, I build shot lists that lean more heavily on genuine, in-the-moment documentation rather than repeated technical execution, planning for opportunistic capture of authentic moments rather than a shot list that depends on a subject's ability to precisely repeat a demanding physical movement on command.
I also plan for meaningfully different amounts of direction and reassurance time with each category. Professional athlete shoots often move efficiently through a tighter shot list since less explanation and reassurance is typically needed, while everyday adventurer shoots benefit from more built-in time for the subject to relax and settle into a natural comfort level in front of the camera.
Recognizing which category a given subject falls into, and adjusting shot list expectations accordingly before a shoot even begins, has prevented a number of situations where I might otherwise have planned an unrealistic shot list that assumed a level of physical capability or camera comfort the actual subject genuinely didn't have.
How I Direct Each Category Differently
Directing a professional athlete tends to involve more technical, precise communication, specific framing about exactly what movement or positioning is needed, since they typically have both the skill and camera awareness to understand and execute that kind of precise direction efficiently without extensive additional explanation.
Directing an everyday adventurer tends to require more emotional and relational communication, building genuine rapport and comfort before asking for anything technically demanding, since a subject who feels genuinely at ease is far more likely to produce authentic, natural-feeling results than one who feels rushed or pressured before they've had time to settle in.
I try to stay attentive to signs of genuine discomfort or fatigue more actively with everyday adventurers specifically, since they're less likely to have the same built-in physical conditioning and camera-shoot stamina that a professional athlete typically brings, and pushing too hard for too long can produce genuinely unsafe or simply unproductive results.
With professional athletes, I try to stay attentive to a different kind of fatigue, less physical and more about maintaining genuine, spontaneous energy across a longer shoot day, since repeated technical takes can sometimes drift toward a more mechanical, less emotionally engaged performance the longer a demanding shoot day continues.
How Client Expectations Differ Across These Two Categories
Clients hiring for professional athlete content often expect and specifically want the polished, technically impressive quality that comes with working with a highly skilled subject, precise action, dramatic technical demonstrations, content that showcases genuine expertise and mastery of a specific activity.
Clients hiring for everyday adventurer content often want something different, genuine relatability, authenticity, a sense that the activity being documented is accessible and appealing to their broader, less specialized target audience rather than only to an audience of expert practitioners already deeply immersed in that specific activity.
I try to clarify explicitly with a client, early in project planning, which of these two registers their specific project actually calls for, since mismatching subject type and creative goal, hiring a professional athlete for a project that actually needed relatable authenticity, or vice versa, tends to produce a final deliverable that doesn't quite serve the client's actual underlying marketing goal.
This clarification conversation has become a standard, important part of my pre-production process specifically because I've seen projects underperform when this fundamental subject-type decision wasn't made deliberately and explicitly before casting and shoot planning actually began.
Projects That Genuinely Benefit From Combining Both
Some of the strongest projects I've worked on have deliberately combined both professional athletes and everyday adventurers within the same broader campaign, using the professional athlete's technical mastery for dramatic hero content while using everyday adventurers for more relatable supporting and lifestyle content.
This combination lets a campaign achieve both goals simultaneously, technical, aspirational impact from professional-level content alongside genuine relatability from everyday adventurer content, rather than forcing a single subject type to try to achieve both creative goals within a single, inevitably compromised approach.
Planning a shoot that includes both subject types requires genuinely careful scheduling and logistics, since the two groups often have very different availability, comfort levels, and physical capabilities, and trying to shoot both groups with an identical approach and timeline tends to shortchange one or both categories relative to what a more tailored approach would achieve.
I try to build genuinely distinct sub-plans within a single project brief when both subject types are involved, treating each almost as its own mini-shoot with its own appropriate shot list, direction approach, and pacing, rather than trying to force a single unified approach across subjects with genuinely different needs and capabilities.
What I've Learned About Reading a Subject's Actual Category Quickly
Over years of working with both professional athletes and everyday adventurers, I've developed a reasonably reliable instinct for quickly assessing which category a given subject actually falls into, even within the professional-versus-everyday spectrum itself, which isn't always a perfectly clean binary distinction in practice.
I pay attention early in a shoot to how naturally a subject moves through a technical direction request, how much repeated coaching or reassurance seems genuinely needed, and adjust my approach in real time based on what I'm actually observing rather than rigidly sticking to a pre-planned approach based purely on a subject's formal title or professional status.
This real-time reading matters because the professional-versus-everyday distinction isn't always as clean as it initially sounds, some genuinely skilled amateur adventurers have significant camera experience and physical capability approaching professional-level performance, while some technically credentialed professionals are surprisingly uncomfortable and inexperienced in front of a camera specifically.
Staying genuinely attentive and adaptive, rather than assuming a fixed approach based purely on a subject's formal category, has produced considerably better results than rigidly applying either the professional-athlete or everyday-adventurer playbook regardless of what a specific individual subject actually needs and can genuinely deliver.
How Casting Conversations Differ for Each Subject Type
Casting conversations with prospective professional athlete subjects tend to focus heavily on scheduling logistics and specific technical capabilities relevant to the planned shoot, since their general camera comfort and physical skill level are often already well-established through their professional background and prior experience being documented.
Casting conversations with everyday adventurer subjects require more attention to genuinely assessing comfort level and communication style upfront, since these subjects vary considerably more in camera experience and personality, and getting a clearer sense of that variation before the shoot day itself helps me plan direction and pacing more accurately for that specific individual.
I try to ask different kinds of questions during casting depending on which category a prospective subject falls into, more technical and logistics-focused for professional athletes, more relational and comfort-focused for everyday adventurers, since the information that actually matters most for planning a successful shoot differs meaningfully between the two categories.
This differentiated casting approach has improved how accurately I'm able to plan a shoot day's pacing and direction strategy in advance, rather than discovering a subject's actual comfort level and capability only once the shoot itself is already underway and adjustments become more logistically difficult to make smoothly.
How I Prepare Each Subject Type Differently Before the Shoot Day
For professional athlete subjects, pre-shoot preparation often focuses on technical alignment, confirming exact movements or sequences needed, coordinating timing around their broader professional schedule, and making sure any specific technical requirements are clearly understood by both sides well before the shoot day itself begins.
For everyday adventurer subjects, pre-shoot preparation leans more heavily toward comfort-building and expectation-setting, walking through generally what the shoot day will involve, addressing any nervousness about being photographed, and building a level of familiarity and trust before the actual shoot day that helps the subject feel more genuinely at ease once shooting actually begins.
I've found that this differentiated preparation meaningfully improves shoot-day efficiency and results for both subject categories, since each type of subject arrives better prepared for what they specifically need to feel confident and capable, rather than receiving identical, generic preparation regardless of their actual individual needs and background.
This preparation investment, tailored specifically to subject type, has become a standard part of my pre-production process, recognizing that the work of producing a strong final image genuinely begins well before the shoot day itself, in how thoughtfully each specific subject has been prepared for what's actually going to be asked of them.
I've also noticed that this preparation investment pays dividends beyond the immediate shoot, since subjects who feel genuinely well-prepared and respected during the process are considerably more likely to speak positively about the experience afterward, which has occasionally led to referrals or repeat opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have had access to through purely client-facing distribution efforts alone.
I think this often-overlooked benefit of thorough subject preparation deserves more attention than it typically gets in conversations about photography business development, since a subject's own network and word-of-mouth influence can matter genuinely as much as a client's, particularly for everyday adventurer subjects who often have their own meaningful, engaged community and following within their specific activity's broader world.
I've started asking, during casting conversations with everyday adventurer subjects specifically, about their own involvement in relevant communities or groups, not to leverage them purely for promotional purposes, but because understanding that context has occasionally shaped how I approach the shoot itself, recognizing that the resulting images might genuinely matter to a specific community well beyond the immediate client's intended usage alone.
This awareness has occasionally shaped a specific creative decision, choosing to include a detail or moment that would resonate especially with that subject's own community, even when it wasn't explicitly requested by the client, since that kind of thoughtful attention tends to produce work that feels more genuinely authentic and specific rather than generic and interchangeable with countless other similar images already circulating widely across the same broader activity's community and its many established online spaces.
One distinction I've come to rely on is separating performance from presence. An athlete is usually performing, consciously or not, aware that the camera is documenting a skill they've spent years refining, while an everyday adventurer is more often simply present in a moment that happens to be photographed. Neither approach is more valid than the other, but conflating them produces work that misrepresents both, athletic imagery that feels staged when it should feel earned, or everyday imagery that feels forced when it should feel unguarded. Learning to read which mode a given subject is actually operating in, often within the first few frames of a shoot, has become one of the more useful diagnostic skills I've developed over years of working across both categories.
Building the judgment to adapt shooting and directing approach to each specific subject is part of the bigger craft framework I cover in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.
Reflection Questions
- Does your current shot list planning account for the difference between professional and everyday subjects?
- How do you adjust your direction and pacing when working with a less camera-experienced subject?
- Have you ever combined both subject types within a single project, and how did you structure that shoot?
- How quickly can you typically read which category a new subject actually falls into once a shoot begins?
Dalton Johnson is a professional adventure and editorial photographer with over a decade of experience shooting on all seven continents. His client work includes Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, Big Agnes, Ford Bronco, and 160+ other brands. He runs Dalton Johnson Media as a full-service studio, from pre-production through post and distribution.